Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties

Los Angeles Times Bestseller This riveting tour through 1960s Los Angeles is a history from below in the very best sense as it celebrates the grassroots heroes and struggles of the social movements of the era (Barbara Ehrenreich author of Natural Causes). Authoritative and impressive. Los Angeles Times Monumental. Guardian Los Angeles in the sixties was a hotbed of political and social upheaval. The city was a launchpad for Black Powerwhere Malcolm X and Angela Davis first came to prominence and the Watts uprising shook the nation. The city was home to the Chicano Blowouts and Chicano Moratorium as well as being the birthplace of Asian American as a political identity. It was a locus of the antiwar movement gay liberation movement and womens movement and of course the capital of California counterculture. Mike Davis and Jon Wiener provide the first comprehensive movement history of L.A. in the sixties drawing on extensive archival research and dozens of interviews with principal figures as well as the authors storied personal histories as activists. Following on from Daviss award-winning L.A. history City of Quartz Set the Night on Fire is a historical tour de force delivered in scintillating and fiercely beautiful prose.